


Never to Touch (And Never to Keep)

by gelbes_gilatier



Series: We Were Soldiers Once (And Young) [6]
Category: Halo
Genre: Angst, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Het, Smut, Soldiers, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-13
Updated: 2013-06-13
Packaged: 2017-12-14 22:09:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,360
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/841921
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gelbes_gilatier/pseuds/gelbes_gilatier
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Things between Thomas Lasky and Sarah Palmer have changed, even though it doesn't look like it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Never to Touch (And Never to Keep)

**Author's Note:**

> So. On fanfiction.net I was asked to just have them kiss. I took the suggestion to heart. Not sure if the result is what the reviewer had in mind...

Never to Touch (And Never to Keep)

  
_“Well you see her when you fall asleep_   
_But never to touch and never to keep_   
_‘Cause you loved her too much_   
_And you dived too deep_   


  
_Well you only need the light when it's burning low_   
_Only miss the sun when it starts to snow_   
_Only know you love her when you let her go.”_   


_Passenger, "Let Her Go"_

  
It’s funny, he thinks. He’d somehow expected that things between them would be different, somehow, someway, after he’d had the sudden epiphany in the atrium about wanting her to kiss him so, so badly. He expected _something_ would be different. But it’s been the same, all along. Same banter, same fighting, same camaraderie.

Only he caught himself looking at her kind of absentmindedly for just a moment too long when Roland briefs them on the latest news concerning ‘Mdama and Halsey, how they’re dragging a trail of destruction behind them on the run from _Infinity_ or instantly worrying how she would deal with it when Osman informs them that they’d soon receive additional support in their search from a certain SPARTAN Master Chief.

Or leaning on the terminal and gripping it so hard that his hands both hurt while listening to the radio traffic from the ground and watching the events unfold in the 3D hologram in front of him. Watching an entire fireteam going down from too much Elite and Promethean fire, just like that. Being glad that it wasn’t hers and feeling so, so guilty for it immediately. Just like now.

“Captain, tactical analysis says we need to withdraw the fireteams. The odds are too great.” For a moment, he’s tempted to quote a several hundred years old science fiction flick and telling Roland never to tell him the odds but he reminds himself just in time that Roland would take that as an invitation to start lecturing him on 20th century war pop culture.

In the hologram, a miniature version of Sarah – it’s funny how it’s so easy for him to recognize her form, just from the way she moves and fights – orders the Chief to take the fireteam he’s attached to for the time being to guard their rear from any Prometheans daring to snatch any of her precious SPARTANs. They’re not making any headway now, being firmly entrenched in an ancient Forerunner structure ‘Mdama’s fighters were guarding some project or other in that had Glassman in hysterics the moment they told him about it.

It really doesn’t look too good but those are SPARTANs and they have the Chief with them. They probably wouldn’t obey him if he ordered them to abort anyway. “Captain?”

He shakes his head. “Not yet, Roland.”

“Captain, with all due respect…” Every time Roland uses that, he’s about to be thoroughly disrespectful so he doesn’t give him time to say whatever he was about to say.

“She’s got the situation under control. What do you think she’s going to do to me if I order her to abort _now_?” Never, _never_ again he wants to experience the horrible kind of Cold War they fought after he sent Majestic down to retrieve Halsey before Sarah could shoot her.

“Point taken, sir.” Apparently, Roland remembers it none too fondly, either. So he keeps watching them in silent, seeing her downing enemy after enemy, hearing her issue orders in that… unique way of hers even to the Chief, insulting Elites and Prometheans and just generally being herself in all her SPARTAN glory.

And then suddenly, everything goes to hell. He has no idea what happened but one minute, _Infinity_ ’s SPARTANS were holding their own, even starting to make some way forward again and then… everything is chaos. In the miniature versions on the terminal, it looks strangely detached but the radio traffic takes his heart and squeezes it until he has serious trouble not going back all the way to Circinius IV and seeing Chyler slowly die from the spire through her body. All the strength he can drag up goes into ordering the Pelicans to extract his soldiers.

There’s confusion everywhere, SPARTANs going down, until it looks like Sarah and Chief are the last ones standing, trying to hold off the enclosing enemies from the Pelicans’ LZ, taking turns in evacuating fallen SPARTANs behind crumbled walls. The minutes until he sees the Pelicans swoop in and release ODST and SPARTAN reinforcements to secure the extraction rank almost top in the most terrible minutes of his entire life.

Maybe things changed, after all.

However, now’s not the time to contemplate it and as soon as the Pelicans lifted off the Forerunner structure, he tells his XO he’s got the bridge and makes his way down to the hangar bay, Roland’s voice with status updates on the evacuated SPARTANs constantly in his ear.

When he arrives, the Pelicans are already there and being unloaded. There are too many stretchers being lifted by infirmary personnel. Too many stretchers with a sheet covering the bulk of a SPARTAN armor. Sarah’s not among them. He knows that and he tries to tell himself he needs to make it believable to the crew that none of them are, that SPARTANs never die but when he sees Sarah exiting one of the Pelicans and taking off her helmet, slowly walking up to him and looking at him with empty eyes before passing him wordlessly, he finds himself unable to hold up the carefully propagated lie.

He turns around but doesn’t follow her, just looks at her and for a terrible moment all he can think of when he sees her back and the drag in her step is that this is how a broken SPARTAN looks. It’s already very apparent that this is the biggest loss of life under her command yet, both as a SPARTAN and as an ODST commander.

“Commander Palmer is not a SPARTAN, sir.” He turns around, not really having registered that someone just talked to him for a moment… coming face to face with the Chief.

Or, well, face to chest plate, anyway. Craning his neck a little, he looks at the visor, closed as ever and he realizes what the Chief just said to him. He looks away. “I don’t think…”

“She’s not a SPARTAN tonight, sir.” What is she then, he thinks as he stares at that visor, for a crazy moment he thinks he sees something in it, something… “She’s human.”

Yes, maybe that’s what he just saw in that visor. Something _human_. For a moment, he fails to find any words, his mind emptied by a nameless, strange exhaustion. And then the only thing that he does find to reply is, “Debriefing tomorrow at 0800, Chief.”

That’s probably the most meaningless thing he ever said to anyone in his entire life.

For a moment, it looks like the Chief might be thinking the exact same thing and he realizes that thinking Sarah was the only SPARTAN he could read with their helmets on was a misconception. Maybe he can’t read all of them… but knowing Sarah apparently taught him more than he always assumed.

He’s kind of grateful for the Chief when he acknowledges the order with a slight nod and a “Yes, sir,” before walking away, heavy steps reverberating on the deck plates. It’s not the first time that he finds himself wondering if it’s just him or if there still seems to be a visible reminder of the Chief not being quite whole anymore.

It takes him another moment of staring after the Chief with the same kind of empty minds that made him say that stupid thing he just said until he takes in the activity in the hangar for one last time, checking if the situation is under control, kind of glad that his crew is trained well enough for their captain only being in the way in that kind of situation. Convinced that there’s nothing he can do, he makes himself return to the bridge for the remainder of his shift.

It’s uneventful and neither Osman nor Roland nor any unpleasant surprises left over by the Sangheili that kicked _Infinity_ ’s SPARTANS’ asses disrupt the quiet aftermath of what happened down on that planet. A few times throughout the shift, he almost yearns for something to do, to keep him occupied, to keep him on the bridge after his shift is finished but nothing happens and he walks back to his quarters, feet heavy with another mission gone down the drain.

Arriving in his quarters, he contemplates going on a run for a moment, until he sees the desk full of unread mission reports, communiqués and the day to day dredge of a UNSC battleship captain and he almost welcomes it. If nothing else, it’s a suitable excuse for not going to bed right away.

Not really thinking about it, he sheds his uniform, shrugs it off, lets the pieces lie where they fall and pulls on the looser, more comfortable skin of an off-duty officer, already reading reports off his screen in between pulling on another set of pants and shirt. He only realizes that the usual effect of his off-duty self replacing _Infinity_ ’s captain never fell in place after he’s been sitting at his desk for two hours and didn’t even get to the communiqués yet when there’s a knock on his door.

Usually, Roland alerts him to anyone approaching his personal quarters looking about to be wanting something from him. Usually, Sarah is the only one Roland doesn’t alert him to. Maybe the AI really is afraid of her, as she once claimed.

Either way he just looks at the door for a tiny, hesitant moment and then he remembers how she looked when she walked away from him on the deck. He’s up before he can second-guess himself, opens the door before he can consider a different course of action and he stares at her for a painful moment, long enough to register the slight almost undetectable slump in her posture and the rawness in her look, before he reaches up to pull her down to cover her mouth with his.

There’s this moment, infinitesimally small in which he wonders why the hell he just did that and then there’s a much more troubling moment in which he wonders why the hell she doesn’t shove him into the nearest wall and tells him to never, _ever_ do that again or she will end him.

Instead, she hesitates, just for the blink of an eye, before giving in and leaning in and giving him back what he never expected he’d be able to give her. He’s not sure but one of them must have had some sense left in their head because he feels himself move backwards, away from the door, shuffling, stumbling, still kissing her and grabbing her hips and pressing her against the door that closed automatically.

He’d like to say that he has no idea where that came from and that he lets go of her immediately, apologizing profoundly and hoping they’ll never mention it again. It’s just that this isn’t how it happens. He knows _exactly_ where that came from and he has no inclination whatsoever of letting her go.

Mainly because she doesn’t seem to, either.

In a flurry of hands and mouths, they make it over to his bed and he’d never think he’d hear Sarah Palmer laugh as throaty as she does when he tries to get the damn body suit off her, muttering about damn SPARTANs always having to be such damn overachievers about their combat readiness. But then again, the wrestling it off only serves as an additional turn on.

And then, it’s off and she’s… beautiful beneath it and she feels exactly like he remembers from touching her back and he’d never have thought that Sarah Palmer would feel like that, all soft and silky and strong. He’s on top of her and she’s arching her back when he grabs her hips and the thrill it gives him nearly prematurely ends this whole thing.

She’s challenging him, God, she is because she’s burying her hands in his hair and she’s scraping her nails across his back, just enough pressure to give him a kick. Somewhere deep down he still knows he shouldn’t be doing this – _they_ shouldn’t be doing this – but she’s Sarah and he waited for this for ages, probably ever since he met her for the first time and she was hurting and he just wants _to make it better_.

God, he knows he should be taking his time but she makes it impossible for him, urging him on in that determined way of hers, making it impossible for him to stop and catch his breath, discover her, discover himself, just urging him on and on and on.

In the end, it’s over as fast and as suddenly as it began but damn, he doesn’t regret it, not one bit, not when she doesn’t even make a move to get off the bed, instead scoots to the side, to give him some room and he swears he was never happier about his partner drifting off to sleep almost as soon as she let out her last moan than right now. She earned it. She fucking earned being able to fall asleep so easily.

When he finally falls asleep himself, after too many minutes of contemplating her sleeping form next to him and the pretty much inappropriate feelings of protectiveness she stirs deep inside of him, it’s probably the first time since he moved into his quarters on _Infinity_ that he doesn’t either knock on the wall next to him or touches the ceiling above him, the CAMS creed he had etched into it when he moved in but it just feels so _right_ so he never even thinks about questioning it.

It’s only when he wakes up alone in his bed hours later, all traces of her ever having been in his room last night gone, that he wonders if he probably just made the biggest mistake of his life.


End file.
